Ironwood (Part 2)

• On Sunday we all went to church together.  Rich was the only one from the Boggs family who came though.  We'd stayed up late on Saturday night waiting for Mike and Cassandra to arrive.  They got there close to midnight.  Cassandra sure got a good dose of Betzold that week :)  There was no smoke and mirrors... everything was put right out there.  In their first five minutes at the camp, the N word was used (not in a racial context... but that's what the brothers sometimes call each other... but still embarrassing) and so was the phrase "douche bag."  (Ohhh, Betzolds.)  Anyway, so we all made the 40-50 minute drive to Ashland.  I went to RS with the ladies while Jake took Lila and Athena to Nursery, except they didn't spend the whole hour in Nursery.  They were out playing in the foyer by the chapel and Lila was opening and closing doors (one of her favorite things to do) and poor Athena (whose nickname is Pena) got her finger shut in the door.  It was dented, no blood though.  So that was pretty traumatic for her.  The RS lesson was on the law of the gospel (obedience, sacrifice, consecration, and chastity) and it struck me how important it is that we have families, because we learn those principles best within families.  Sunday School was interesting too.  I think that the teacher, an old man, was trying to stall because he wrote all of the visitors' individual names on the chalkboard.  There were like 20 visitors, and most of them were Betzolds.  It was funny because he wrote "Brother and Sister Mike Betzold" on the board... so eventually Cassandra clarified that she was a Lillrose and not a Betzold.  We spent most of the hour trying to entertain Anna and Lila.  Sacrament meeting went pretty well.  It was so nice to just sit in the pews as a family.  We took up a lot of space in the chapel.  Lauren wanted to sit next to me (I'm her "favorite aunt"), Lila was passed between uncles, and behind us Mike and Cassandra cuddled Eva and Pena.  I could tell it was a significant moment for C :)
• After dinner, all the Betzolds went to Little Girls Point to take family pictures, since it was the only day that all 6 siblings would be there.  Sam wasn't feel well at all.  His throat really hurt and he had a fever, so after we took pictures Lori took him to Urgent Care.  Luckily, he didn't have strep.  We spent a few hours at the park.  The girls had fun playing on the swings and merry-go-round.  Cassandra was pushing Pena on a swing and she pushed her a little too high and Pena fell off, right onto her back.  OUCH.  So Pena had a pretty rough day, between that and getting her finger pinched in the door that morning.  The little girls wanted to go down to the beach.  So Papa (Jim) took Lila for a walk down there and Jake and I stayed up with Anna, cuddled her and walked her around in the stroller and got to visit with each other.  I like that guy, Jake.
• Sunday night we did fireworks.  Mom and Dad had bought illegal ones (in the state of Michigan) that were pretty sweet.  It was the only night that we'd all be there together.  I thought that for sure the fireworks would wake Lila up, but she stayed asleep the whole time.  I sat inside the cabin for most of it because I didn't want to get eaten by bugs, but everyone else said that they were awesome. :)  Jake was the one who got to light them up, and he sure loved that job.  Afterwards, Mom got out the accordion and played some songs.  Jake and I slow danced by the bon fire before heading to bed.
• On Monday, the 4th, we laid low.  We had planned on going to the kids parade (it was from 1:30-2), but Lila was still sleeping when it was time to leave, and I didn't want to wake her, so we ended up not going.  Melissa ended up not going either, but still went into town to go to Walmart and brought Mike and Cassandra with her.  We didn't go to fireworks that night either because Lila was already in bed, but that's ok.  We have many more years ahead of us to enjoy the festivities of the 4th.  It's my favorite holiday, so I was a little bummed that we didn't do anything in town, but that's how it is when you have small children.  Mike and Cassandra did go into town to see the fireworks... though they didn't leave till 10:00.  The Boggs left that afternoon.  Doug Banyai and his girlfriend Amalia arrived that afternoon; they spent the night there with us.  Doug is still at Tech working on his PhD and Amalia just graduated with her PhD and is heading to Arkansas to teach Physics at a small college there.  Nice people.  They went for a Jeep ride with Jake in the afternoon to Superior Falls to go cliff jumping into the river.  That same afternoon, Mike and Cassandra and maybe Dan took the 4-wheelers out.  Something broke on one of the 4-wheelers, unfortunately.  As we were sitting around chatting after dinner, the people who'd been out in the woods that afternoon found a whole bunch of ticks on them.  Yuck.  Jake and I went to bed while everyone else stayed up late watching a movie.  I was feeling so exhausted.
• The rest of the week, I don't think I left the camp very much at all.  One afternoon I took a walk with Melissa and the girls down Aspen Lane.  And then on the last full day there, Vince, Melissa, Jake, Dan and I went to Superior Falls so that Jake and Dan could jump off the cliff and the rest of us could swim.  Jake did get to go out and have fun with his brothers though.  He went for lots of four-wheeler rides and swimming a few times.  He took a long nap one afternoon because he was having bad allergies.  But mostly we just hung out at the camp.  Lila had a lot of fun there.  She played well inside, but mostly wanted to be outside.  Whenever she wanted to go out, she would knock on the doors and say "walk."  She learned so much there.  Jim and Lori bought a trampoline for the kids with a protective netting around it.  Lila LOVED that and she practically threw a tantrum whenever we'd try to take her off.  She sometimes bounced around on it and loved being on it with her cousins, but mostly she'd just zip and unzip the netting and peek in and out of it.  They also bought a pool for the kids that was a few feet deep, but Lila didn't like that at all.  The older kids sure had a lot of fun playing in it though.  Especially Jake :) He'd go in there with the girls and play shark and tag, just like a little kid.  He's so funny.  He always tells me that all I have to do is try to think of what I'd like to do as a kid... but I can't remember that well.  He's really good with kids and at making up games for them to play.
• Lila also discovered the joy of bubbles.  She learned how to say it too.  She liked dipping the wand in and out of the soap and tried blowing bubbles a few times.  She also liked stepping on them when they landing on the ground.
• She was notorious for getting people to pick her up, and then pointing and grunting and saying "walk" and having them cart her all over the place.  She especially did this with Papa, it was pretty funny.  She must have Grandpa Radar because she does this with my dad too.  She also liked Sam and Dan.  Cassandra asked for a hug once, and Lila buried her face in Grandpa's chest, turning away.  Then Cassandra said, "Do you want to go for a walk?"  And Lila snapped her head around and practically threw herself at Cassandra, it was so funny.  
• The one movie we did watch all together on the big screen projector was True Grit.  Good movie.  Jake and I laid in one of the beds because he was allergic to the big couch (they had it when they had Caca).  Good movie.
• Lila slept well in Ironwood.  She, Jake, and I slept in the cabin, in the room with the bunk bed.  There was a crib in there too.  I was worried that she wouldn't want to take naps or go to bed, but it was quite the opposite.  When she was tired, she really wanted to go to bed.  I'm sure she was wearing herself out, running around outside in the sun and playing with her cousins.  She took an hour an a half nap every afternoon and went to bed at around 8 every night.  Jake and I stayed up pretty late most nights. (For us, midnight-1am is pretty late.)  
• Verizon has no cell phone reception at the camp, so I didn't have my phone on the whole time.  It was awesome.  They do have HughsNet, so it's a decent speed but you can't do any streaming (like Youtube), so people weren't on the internet very much either.  Jake checked him work email maybe once a day.  He did end up hiring that single mother, Rebecca, as a new project manager.  
• We had so much fun with his family.  So much fun.  I love his family because we always end up just sitting around and talking.  We laughed a lot together.  It was especially funny because Cassandra was there for a lot of it, and we talked about some pretty colorful stuff.  One night it was moles and poop.  Jake has a lot of moles and a lot of poop stories too.  The next day, Cassandra told us how surprised she was to see the "real" Jake.  She's known Jake and I for 5 years, and has only known the church versions of us.  She said that I'm not too different, but Jake was like a completely different person than she thought he was.  At church, Jake is pretty serious, straight-laced, business-like, etc.  I said that people probably wonder what I see in him.  I'm glad that someone else from church now knows the "real" Jake.  :)
• One of the things the Betzolds always talk about is the car accidents that the kids got in growing up.  I've heard those stories many times.  Some funny stories:
• One time the four oldest kids were up in a tree fort.  The fort didn't have any walls.  They brought up little cups and some beverage (maybe Gatorade or rootbeer) and had contests to see who could drink the cup the fastest.  When you were finished, you were supposed to slam the cup to the table; the first one to do that won.  So one time, Jake did that, slammed the cup to the table, threw up his hands and said, "I win!"  And the momentum from throwing his hands up made him fall backwards off the tree fort! 
• When Jake was little and they still lived on the Bluff in Gladstone, one of his girl friends (Tara) that he played with a lot had Barbies.  So he wanted some Ken dolls so that he could play with them. So, Lori bought him two dolls: Ken and Steve.  (How gay does that sound?)  And they were even the swimsuit dolls.  Jim really didn't like that Jake was playing with Barbie dolls--he felt it was really important to make sure his boys were masculine :)  Jake didn't see what the big deal was because they were male dolls.  So, he told Jake that he would trade him 100 army guys, 4 army tanks, and a pair of rollerskates for the Ken dolls.  And that made Melissa and Jim pretty mad because they'd just saved up their money to buy themselves rollerskates.  And what's more, a while later, Jake was playing in the attic and found the Ken dolls up there, so he got those too. :)  So then we started talking about how Jake (and the other guys) definitely aren't gay.  Like Jake and his JC Penney catalogs, lol, and how Melissa saw Sam checking out a poster of Lara Croft Tomb Raider once and thought to herself, "Well, Sam's definitely not gay."
• Melissa said that growing up, Jake was always really dependable and helpful.  He never complained about doing chores.  He always just went to work and did his chores thoroughly and happily.  He's still like that today.  If I ask him to do something, he'll never complain about it.  He'll do it like it's no big deal and he's so thorough.  But they joked because whenever his parents would send Jake to the storage room in Petoskey to find something (probably food), Jake would be gone for a really long time and come back empty-handed because he honestly couldn't find anything.  (Dad said that the storage room was an absolute mess.)  And whenever it was time to clean or do chores, Jim would always say that he had to go to the bathroom and hide out in there, so they teased him about that too.
• We talked about blue darts, which is something I know we've talked about before.  I shared the story of how one time we were in bed (I have no idea why Jake was doing blue darts in our bed!) and Jake burned a hole right through his garment bottoms doing one.  (He wasn't wearing any pants over them.  And how another time his flannel pajamas briefly caught on fire.  Dad asked if it was some sort of weird honeymoon trick that Jake tried to show me (wondering why Jake would want to do blue darts in front of me), and asked, "Did he say, 'Hey, wanna see something cool?"  And I said, "No, but he did say that about something else."  And we laughed and laughed and laughed.
• We were talking about pregnancy and Melissa asked what time of year we got pregnant with Lila.  Jake and I laughed and said that it was the 4th of July in Ironwood.  So then Melissa laughed about their kids... two of them were conceived in hotel rooms, including Eva who was conceived on mine and Jake's wedding night.  
• One day during lunch, Dan was filling out a job application to Family Video.  One of the questions on the application was, "Why do you want to work at Family Video?"  Which is a pretty silly question.  "Uh, because I want money?"  So I told him to write, "I like families and I like videos."  And he did.  And he got a job interview!  (He just had the interview today and is waiting to hear back from them.)
• Vince told a lot of funny stories, some of them mission stories.  The best was the "trench coat" story.  One time he and his companions were driving to an appointment and a wave of diarrhea hit them (I told you we talked a lot about poop).  So he told them that they needed to stop and pull over so he could go to the bathroom.  So he hopped a fence, not knowing that on the other side was a ledge.  So he grabbed on to two tree branches, hanging from the ledge, did his business, then realized he didn't have TP.  So he used his trench coat.  Then looked down and saw that the ledge was above a bike trail. LOL.  Funny funny.